Raindrops
by DarkenedSakura
Summary: Because those raindrops, they can be so much like herself sometimes. Haibara centric.


Summary: Because those raindrops, they can be so much like herself sometimes. Haibara-centric.

**Raindrops  
By DarkenedSakura**

--l--

_...have you ever found yourself just looking at the sky?_

--l--

Sometimes, before she can catch herself, she watches the rain.

It's a pointless activity, one that wastes what time she could be spending on figuring out things like the antidote and ways to take down the Black Organization and how to leave everything behind when it's all over. Those things. But yet again, she's resting her arms against the windowsill, watching the spot where the sky falls to the ground, thinking. Because people always find themselves thinking and she's a person too, just as flesh-and-blood as the rest of them whether it feels like it or not.

This time, she's pondering the droplets' fate. How they're destined to do nothing but fall and splatter against the rough ground, to go out with a splash, to be forgotten before they're even noticed.

She thinks about that fact, and wonders. And marvels, because she and those raindrops, they can be so similar sometimes. Because she can find a dark black bleak metaphor in anything, from sunshine (cancer) to candy canes and marshmallows (teeth and cavities and rot) to babies (look at what they grow into). Because after a certain point, one doesn't really need to try to connect water to floods, research into poison, life into death – it's like thinking 'home' and inevitably picturing it, like thinking 'living' and 'family' and 'love' and 'dying' –

And all those things.

Raindrops hit concrete black tops at astonishing speeds like translucent bullets before they burst into clusters of molecules, sliding down with gravity.

--l--

Sometimes, before she can catch herself, she's laughing with everyone else.

The children, the Detective Boys, the professor, everyone. With Kudo, too, though it's usually at him and not with him yet with him, in that sense. It's not something she can quite put into words, only feelings and motions and habit.

The kids go with the flow, soaking up every bit of joy that they come across during the days. She kind of envies them, kind of doesn't. She can even see the tragic things in that kind of a life, the life she probably wished for so much, the life she'll never have, the life she's still not sure she'll ever want.

The life that's really pointless to think about.

They like to jump in puddles, Ayumi especially. Much to the chagrin of the boys, somewhat, but the girl's laughter and smiles pulls them into the water like the moon pulls upon the sea, and soon they're all sopping wet and feeling the rain on their faces.

Kudo was the one who pulled her along with him first. The others didn't dare try, but it wasn't as though she could've stayed mad at any of them for long. Not that she'd say anything to reassure them otherwise.

Because she doesn't encourage people. Doesn't encourage kids to latch on, monsters to bite, evil men to smile in black, guns to aim, load, and fire.

Beams of sunlight reflect off of colors and houses and life, and then the sun sets and everything is awash in dark, dark black, with a few tinges of gray.

--l--

Sometimes, before she can catch herself, she shivers.

A member of the Black Organization might be standing right behind her, and at this point, she's not sure if that bolt of fear she's always expected will even come to warn her, as if even fear has forsaken her. Instead, chills run down her spine from the slightest movement of anything around her, paranoia filling in for the instinct she lost that was caused by soft living.

She's a girl running away from shadows that chase shadows in the darkness, a girl who always looks over her shoulders twice over the left and twice over the right.

Because no one runs away from the Black Organization. No one. She was the first, and she'll be the last.

Snowflakes grow and shrink with each layer of the atmosphere they fall through, melting and freezing and forming complicated little patterns of intricacy and ice and deadly jagged shards.

And then, they melt. Because, for all their dangerous beauty, they're not invulnerable, not invincible. And neither is she.

--l--

Sometimes, before she can catch herself, her thoughts stray towards Kudo.

And really, it's just out of habit, because for all of his superb detective skills, he can be – and is, usually – such an idiot. Which means he needs someone with more than common sense to stand out of sight behind him, appearing when he needs a jolt to remind him that even he's not infallible.

Because geniuses make mistakes.

She should know. And does.

She's not sure why she's stayed here this long. Really, she could argue that she has no obligation whatsoever to create his antidote. She could also argue that staying with him, growing closer to him in the kind of closer that she knows is only one-sided – and it's not even because of his denseness, this time – is something between toxin and anathema for her.

Death, she can take. Everyone close to her has already died. But the other option, not living, but simply moving on and moving away and moving between the two, that she isn't sure she can handle. Can even imagine.

She's not really a people person. But lab bottles and beakers make poor substitutions for flesh-and-blood companions, carbon and bromide incomparable stand-ins for the living and the knowing and the breathing and the alive, and she knows this. She knows this, and that's the problem.

The earth slowly poisons itself, an unconsciously extra-toxic kind of poison in its flourish as it turns on its axis, waxing and waning and fading and failing.

As she knows, she can create a synaesthetic dark metaphor out of anything. And she doesn't even have to put her mind to it.

--l--

Sometimes she's contemplative, sometimes she's morose. More often than not, she waxes dark poetics with the clichés and the flowery phrases.

Sometimes she's happy, sometimes she's sad. Always, she's paranoid, a little scared, a little haunted. Not that she'll tell.

Sometimes, before she can catch herself, she watches the rain.

The world's oceans absorb raindrops, glasses overflow at the brim and tumblers fall down from the loaded weight, and the word futility always comes to mind.

She doesn't need to entertain her metaphors to know it's true, and pours a glass until the water tips over the edge and cascades down, down, down.

.fin.

* * *

So yes, I gotta say, this definitely isn't my normal style. Dunno how it came about, either. It just…did? Yeah. That's all the explanation I have.

And it's pretty obvious that Haibara's my favorite. But as to if I get her voice down, well, I'll never know. And there's no point to these author's notes, is there.

Major thanks to Dex for doing the editing despite not knowing the series and catching all these crazy scary errors, and a huge, huge thank you to Rika, who read it in earlier the writing circle and loved it and her comments made me go "zomg" and helped, and…yeah. Maybe I'll post to later, depending. The Pit does need more Haibara fic, so. Hm. Yeah.

Comments and reviews are appreciated too. :)


End file.
